Last week’s poll asked whether you had a landline or mobile phone as your main line into your home. While it wasn’t surprising to see a majority of readers using mobile phones instead of landlines, the percentages were much higher than I expected. Crazy town especially when most people continue to be tied to other outdated means of receiving information over lines.
This week’s poll comes courtesy of the Savage Pacer’s Police calls from the Oct. 22, 2011, edition:
Oct. 15: At 8:29 a.m., a woman from Savage reported that somebody had stolen a pumpkin valued at $4 off her front porch. She also reported that earlier in the week someone had smashed her mailbox causing $20 worth of damage.
[...]
Oct. 16: At 1:25 a.m., a 15-year-old boy from Prior Lake was cited for curfew ordinance violation after he was detained by a homeowner in Savage. The homeowner told police the boy was part a group of three males who was wrapping toilet paper around his home. The other two escaped. The 15-year-old was released to his parents.
When I was a teenager a friend stole two huge pumpkins from a house at the top of a very long hill, ran down to the car with them, hopped in and told me to, “go!” When we were out of sight from the angry homeowner who saw the theft and ran after my friend the pumpkins were rolled out of the car and down the hill at frightening speed. Other than that single incident, however, I do not recall any Halloween pranks being pulled.
How about you? Did you, your friends or your children ever do any Halloween pranking? Did you ever catch anyone in your neighborhood pulling Halloween pranks on others or yourself? If so what did you do to them? Whatever you have to say about this one vote on the sidebar and then comment on below. After you do both of those things feel free to check out our expired polls in the archive or read through the previous posts about polls here.
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October 23rd, 2011 at 7:22 am
I grew up in northern New York, and the night before Halloween was known as “Cabbage Night.” I don’t now where that term came form, but it was always the night for TP’ing houses, egging houses, etc. A night of general chaos. Not necessarily malicious, but not nice, either.
October 23rd, 2011 at 10:21 am
Even as a youth, I’ve been too empathetic to play any pranks on folks. I’ve never seen the fun in it either. That said, I tend to be a stick in the mud when it comes to having fun at others expense. I don’t see the fun in it all. While such an attitude managed to not get me invited to such fun, I don’t recall ever being pranked.
Thursday night (around 8pm) some folks were going around a local neighborhood and putting bags of candy on the front steps of homes. My son’s baby momma was home alone with our grandson and got freaked out when it seemed like strangers were walking around her home and lurking near the front door. We ran over and found the candy on the front step and no one around the house. That’s as close to a prank I’ve seen this year.
October 23rd, 2011 at 11:01 pm
While I never did any Halloween pranks myself I have seen my share of them pulled. When I was about 14 years old (15 years ago now) it was the night before Halloween and I recall it being rather warm out. My parents had the front door open to let some air in. We had many Halloween decorations out front, including fake plastic pumpkins that were “carved” with lights in them that you plug in the outlet. My dad had the 3 of them mounted on a piece of ply wood to help weigh them down. We heard car doors and shoes running up to the door; followed by a thump! Dad and I started running down the stairs to see what the commotion was when we saw a guy running back to his friends’ car yelling “they’re not real!!!” and they peeled off. That was kind of funny to see how dumb they looked trying to steal fake pumpkins to smash.
Last year my dad handed down all the Halloween decorations he had from our yearly tradition of decorating the home–my fiancee and I just bought our first home and last Halloween was the first year we had a chance to decorate. I have skull light stakes that line the driveway. Some little shit last year came 3 separate times and sliced the wires on the lights. The 1st time it happened we thought maybe someone tripped over the wire. The next 2 times we knew some jerk was ruining things.
The night before Halloween the “pranksters” then came through and pulled the skull stakes out of the ground and threw them against our house and dragged what they didn’t throw behind their car down the street. I believe they dropped them when they saw me come out of the house to chase them.
Now what happened to us last year is NOT COOL and the little bastards should have to pay if they get caught for doing damage. While TPing or pumpkin smashing is the “normal” pranks teens pull, ruining expensive lighting decorations and trying to ruin the homeowner’s property is not funny at all.
We have the decorations out again this year, with all the neighbors helping keep an eye out. Plus, we waited until last weekend to put them up instead of early October as I did with the family tradition.
October 24th, 2011 at 10:25 pm
I’ve always been too scared to pull any pranks on others, and I imagine I’ll remain that way for years to come. Can’t recall anyone ever playing pranks on our house either. Then again, we never put out decorations of any sort so there’s nothing to be stolen or damaged. What’s the Halloween version of bah humbug?
October 24th, 2011 at 10:43 pm
When we were 10 or 11, my friends and I were returning home from trick or treating when some kid tried to scare us and steal my buddy’s bag of candy. Unfortunately for the would be thief, there were 3 of us and my other buddy always dressed up as a cop, since his dad was one for Mpls.
That meant he was carrying a night stick. It didn’t go well for the would-be thief as his prank got turned around on him.
October 30th, 2011 at 7:02 am
[...] week’s poll asked about pulling or receiving pranks on Halloween. While I have done pranks and received them, the responses were pretty lame. Either people [...]
October 31st, 2011 at 1:06 pm
We did the usually pumpkin stealing and smashing, but eventually we took it a step further…we’d steal them, carve them, and put them back. More often than not the homeowner used them on Halloween night.
The best prank pulled on me was when my friends stole about 25 pumpkins and set them up all up and down our driveway. I was rudely awaken by my father who made me go out and get them out of his way so he could get to work. I just pushed them off to the side for the time being. WHen I had to leave for school, I jumped in my car and after driving a half a block realized there was someone in the car with me (these were the days when you didn’t have to lock your car). My friends had stolen a life-size scarecrow and put it my back seat. He rode to school with me.
The scarecrow fell apart and I noticed it had been stuffed full of clothing to fill it out. That night I took the various pieces of clothing and hung them all over one of my friends trees, from the eaves, and on the roof. He caught me so I helped him clean up and we went to my other friend’s place and scattered the clothes all over the inside of his pickup. I came across a pair of lady’s panties and put them in his glove compartment.
He cleaned up his truck but didn’t find the panties. About two weeks later he and his girlfriend had a huge fight when she found them! He made me tell her about the whole scarecrow prank and how one thing led to another, but I don’t know if she ever really believed me.
We ended up saving all those pumpkins and using them at our Halloween party in the caves at Quarry Hill in Rochester.